In recent years, a digital image pickup apparatus for shooting an object, coding digital video data, and recording the coded digital video data on a recording medium has become widespread, resulting in an increase in chances of handling a large quantity of digital video data at home.
Although it is desired to edit and organize once shot video, it is troublesome to search the video for a start point of edition. For example, although video data which have been taken in an athletic meeting or a wedding ceremony are temporarily recorded on a recording medium, the video might be left as it is without being reviewed because edition thereof is troublesome.
Further, even when a start point of edition is detected, since a picture corresponding to this start point is an inter-frame predictive picture in a predictive coding process, the start point cannot be easily used as a start position.
As described above, video data taken by the conventional image pickup apparatus needs a troublesome edition working to view only an important part of the video or store it in a recording medium.
Meanwhile, Japanese Published Patent Application No. 2003-299010 discloses a video contents edition support system, and this system includes an image pickup apparatus for shooting an image and recording video contents data, and an editor terminal apparatus for receiving the video contents data obtained by the shooting with the image pickup apparatus through a network or the like in real time to display the image.
The image pickup apparatus of this edition support system includes an electronic mark generation unit for generating electronic mark data on the basis of user operation or the like, and an electronic mark insertion unit for inserting the generated electronic mark data in the video contents data obtained by shooting in association with time codes thereof. Further, the editor terminal apparatus of the edition support system includes a list formation unit for forming electronic mark list data on the basis of the electronic mark data from the image pickup apparatus, and a display unit for displaying the video contents data supplied from the image pickup apparatus, and an image of the video contents data synchronized with the timing corresponding to the electronic mark data is displayed on the display unit.
In the conventional video contents edition support system, since the electronic mark data is added to the video contents data which is data obtained by shooting an object by user operation during shooting, the video contents data obtained by the shooting can be automatically edited on the basis of the electronic mark data by the editor terminal apparatus such as a personal computer.
In the video contents edition support system disclosed in Japanese Published Patent Application No. 2003-299010, however, it is necessary to add the electronic mark data indicating an edition position to the video contents data during edition in order to realize automatic edition after shooting, leading to a troublesome operation of adding markers to important shot parts which seem to be edited and left, during shooting.